The American Spectator

Another Perspective

Some more thoughts on United 93 by the author of Honor: A History....

p> Here, at greater length, is David Thomson's argument in the New York Times , mentioned in my review of United 93 : br> /p>

The stress on false heroics has been reduced. Why? In part, because Mr. Greengrass has lived much of his life with the hideous local hatreds of Ireland, and he is weary of "good clean action" films....At the same time, this is not actually as "dangerous" a film as you might think. This is a picture about American courage and enterprise. It need not be a training film, but it is about the way we all might hope to behave. It is a rousing affirmation of a war effort, not very different from, say, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), which reveled in the Doolittle "gotcha" after Pearl Harbor. Similarly, the big American movie on the Holocaust waited on our discovery of Oskar Schindler -- our way of making films requires heroes, even if sometimes a hero is like poison in the muddied water....The really difficult film to make or offer in America will be the one that says no, the world did not alter its nature on 9/11, even if the worst politicians used that event to switch their reality. But on 9/11, we faced the first need to ask ourselves how other people -- evil, alien, insane -- could be so brave. The history of terrorism -- and it includes the independence of this country -- is that in the end you have to understand the grievance of the aggrieved, whether you agree with it or not. That film has still to come.

br> In other words, heroes are bad because they prevent us from understanding the grievances of the other side, and it's not understanding their grievances that causes them to attack us in the first place. But there are several assumptions here that I think unwarranted. In an honor culture, such as that out of which the terrorists arise, the honor-seekers don't care if you understand them or not. In fact, they're likely to look at you with even more contempt if you do. That's because they seek honor and not better policy choices. Obviously, they would regard it as a victory if America were to abandon its support for Israel, for example, but abandoning our support for Israel would make no difference to their enmity to us and all that we stand for, including our religious freedom, our freedom of speech, and our belief in women's rights. Are we going to give these things up too in a vain effort to "understand" and placate them? Thomson's is a typical liberal response to aggression, but he does not see that it is now outdated. For the world did

topics:
Education, Islam, Hollywood, Movies, Israel, NATO